Water, water everywhere

I probably don’t drink as much water as I should, but I still drink plenty. And 99.99% of what I drink comes from a frosted re-used wine bottle stored in my fridge by way of the kitchen tap.  Sure, when I’m out, I’ll buy bottled water. But if I’m home, it’s Boston’s finest, pure and simple.

Perhaps because I’m so casual about my H2O imbibing habits, I hadn’t been that aware of all the frenzy about “raw water.”

“Raw water”, one might well ask. Isn’t most water kinda sorta raw. After all, water really is water. Unraw water is, well, water turned into something else, like beer or lemonade or Moxie.

Anyway, the folks at the center of the “raw water” craze are a couple of fellows from Harrison, Maine, whose brand is Tourmaline Spring.

Ayah, just a couple of Down-Easters with a company with this fine motto: “Maine is to Water as Alaska is to Gold!”

Raw water is unfiltered and untreated. To some folks, it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Maybe even since bottled water. They’re willing to pay a premium for it. To others, it’s risky business.

I’ve drunk – and survived drinking – raw water a number of times.

Back in the days when I did some camping, we were known to fill our canteens from a stream.

There were rules.

You wanted the water to be running fast, downhill, over rocks. Which wasn’t too hard to find in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

It was cold and it tasted great. Just like water from the tap that’s been refrigerated!

We knew enough not to drink from, say, a still pond. That was an invitation to come down with Giardiasis from beaver excrement.

Things like beaver scat is just one of the reasons why water gets treated. (For more reasons, just ask the people in Flint, Michigan.)

Tourmaline Spring (the raw water spin out of Summit Spring, which is the filtered version) is run by an odd couple. Bryan Pullen is an American Airline pilot who owns the farm in Harrison where the spring is located. Seth Pruzansky was running an organic nut company when they teamed up, which was shortly after Pruzansky got out of prison after being busted with a duffel bag full of weed (64 pounds worth).

Together they came up with – and trademarked – the term raw water. They renamed it Tourmaline, the Maine state gem, because:

“The name, for some people, connoted sewage,” Pullen said. (Source: Portland Press Herald)

Now that’s an excellent reason. Thank god for focus groups!

Anyway, they weren’t selling all that much of the stuff. Last year they were shipping 20 cases a week to Amazon. But then the media started paying attention, including a riff when a “Comedy Central host pretended to take a swig of pothole water to mock the trend.” On the day they got dissed on Comedy Central, they shipped 200 cases. (Shipped in wooden crates, by the way. And their bottles are biodegradable.)

Although it’s unfiltered and untreated, Tourmaline Spring still needs to undergo inspections, the state having an interest in keeping the lid on things like cholera. The water is tested quarterly for bacteria and bad stuff like arsenic. But the fact is that no one – bottler or local water source – is actually required to treat water. That doesn’t keep Tourmaline from making some puffed up claims.

While there are no water quality problems, there are two issues with Tourmaline Spring’s label: A claim that the “water is harvested in Maine from an ancient geologic spring so naturally pure that it is officially exempt from all processing requirements” and a claim that it’s “certified premium grade.”

The exemption claim isn’t correct. No bottlers in Maine are required to process or treat their water as long as it tests safe. (Everyone but Tourmaline Spring treats in Maine regardless of their test results, possibly for liability reasons, [director of the state water program Roger] Crouse said.)

And apparently, while the water can consider itself premium, there’s nothing certified about it.

The claims that Tourmaline makes, however, are nothing but a bit of marketing stretch, compared to what’s going on with their main rival, Oregon’s Live Water.

“(Live Water founder Mukhande Singh) is making a lot of crazy statements like water expires in a lunar cycle,” Pullen said. “Water never expires. He’s talking about women that can’t breastfeed and then they drink his water and they can? We don’t want to get involved in that. There’s no reason. Common sense, 150-year history. We don’t need to get into the ethereal reasons.”

If someone wants to drink raw water – for ethereal or other reasons -  and pay a premium (certified or not) for it, have at it.

To me, it just sounds like yet another hipster craze.

But I have to admit that Pullen sounds like he has no problem taking on his doubters. In response to one Las Vegas doctor he had a radio debate with, Pullen said that “the closest thing to a natural spring this guy’s ever seen is the fountains at the Bellagio.”

Good one! Let me raise a toast of chilled Boston tap water to Tourmaline Spring!